Bin Laden Believed Still Alive

Recent intelligence reports indicate that Osama bin Laden survived the U.S. bombing assault on his hideouts in Afghanistan and could still be somewhere in the lawless, mountainous region that straddles the Afghan-Pakistan border, officials said yesterday.

The reports were distributed at top levels of the U.S. government about 10 days ago. They are somewhat vague, and don't involve solid evidence such as sightings by witnesses or interception of radio transmissions of the voice of the terrorist leader, one official said.

But, the official added, "there are indications that point to his still being in Afghanistan or in that general region." He declined to discuss the nature of that evidence, but it apparently involves in part information gleaned in recent interrogations of al Qaeda members in captivity.

The new intelligence reports aren't sufficiently detailed to lead to direct military action now, the official said. He and other people familiar with the situation indicated that surveillance of both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border are being closely monitored by foot patrols, surveillance aircraft and reconnaissance satellites. The United States blames bin Laden for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The new report on bin Laden's possible location isn't "precise enough to know where to put a big operation," the official said. Even so, he said, "there's a lot of attention being paid to it."

One effect of the report may be to increase pressure on the U.S. military to consider inserting additional troops into the hills of eastern Afghanistan in order to cordon and search areas.

There has been quiet criticism inside the Army's officer corps that Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the U.S. commander in the war, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld should have been more willing to put ground troops into the Tora Bora area in late November to help anti-Taliban Afghan allies track down members of the Taliban leadership and bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.

But in separate television appearances yesterday, Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared to anticipate and reject such pressure to escalate the U.S. military presence in the border region.

"The idea you can seal a border is a notion that is very hard in reality to make come true," Myers said on "Fox News Sunday." "So what we ask, we ask the Pakistan government to provide troops along their side of the border. We have reconnaissance and so forth along the border as well, and through that means, trying to stop the infiltration."

Rumsfeld, appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation," also contended that capturing bin Laden isn't necessarily a military task.

"We're not organized to do manhunts," he said. "That's a law enforcement-type thing. So we're trying to figure out different ways of doing it and gathering intelligence and getting a lot of cooperation from other people, other countries. And we'll keep at it until we find him."

The new indications of bin Laden's whereabouts were first reported in yesterday's editions of the New York Times.

Asked about that report, Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said, "We've gotten new information that he could be in a certain area, but we've heard this before."

Appearing on CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer," he added, "I think the bottom line . . . is that he is on the run, and we're in the hunt, big-time, and we're going to find him."

However, several Defense Department officials sought to play down the significance of the new intelligence report.

Rumsfeld was particularly dismissive, saying, "We see so much intelligence information, and it's snippets of this and snippets of that and speculation about this and theories about that."

Despite all that, he said, "what we do know is there has not been any recent evidence that he's alive."

Overall, the consensus expressed by Pentagon officials is that bin Laden probably is alive and probably is in Afghanistan, but that anything beyond that is speculation.

"I mean, it's possible that he is no longer alive, but I think the odds are he probably is alive," Myers said on Fox.

Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, the chief spokesman for the Central Command, the U.S. headquarters for the war in Afghanistan, said yesterday, "We hear something different every day -- he's in Pakistan, he's alive, he's dead." He said that Franks, the chief of the Central Command, believes that bin Laden is alive and in Afghanistan primarily because there hasn't been solid evidence to the contrary.

Myers was slightly more optimistic about the likelihood of capturing Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader.

"I think we have a little more intelligence in that area, and we'll get him as well," Myers said. "He stays on the move. He's not getting a lot of sleep right now."

Rumsfeld declined to declare victory over al Qaeda. Rather, he said, the evidence "suggests to me that they're on the run."

But Shelby warned that al Qaeda remains a danger. "At least" 100 members of the terrorist organization are still in the United States, and could be in a position to strike, he said.

"A lot of these so-called cells or people, they are scattered all over the United States," he said. "I think they will try to hit us from time to time."